Tuesday, January 13, 2015

2014-2015 - Pretraining, Block1 (Rehab from hip surgery)

In the previous blog for this series, I outlined my 2014-2015 Winter training goals and the training plan intended to take me there. This blog reviews the first 2 blocks of that training plan.

Transition


Because I had hip surgery on Sept 7, 2014, my 2014-2015 Winter training season started much earlier than usual with a 5-week training block spanning Sep 15 to Oct 19. Surprisingly, though using a cane throughout this Transition block, I was able to tolerate trainer workouts quite comfortably.

Figure 1: workout comprising my Transition training block.

Figure 1, above, shows the workouts done during Transition. I began my training cautiously (still on crutches), restricting my early workouts to Level 2 (L2), but, easily able to tolerate more intensity, I bumped up to Sweet Spot (SS) quite rapidly. Perhaps too rapidly, however, as discolouration in the area of my injury (it turned black and blue), most likely swelling due to inflammation, tempered my early enthusiasm and kept me off the bike for most of Week 3. I resumed training again in Weeks 4 and 5, this time taking a more gradual approach to increasing the intensity.

The workouts done during this block were comprised almost entirely of the standard 20' x 2 interval sets.

Figure 2: standard 20' x 2 interval set.
Figure 2, above, illustrates the standard 20' x 2 interval set. The first 10 minutes are warm up. The two 20' "work" intervals, shown in black, are separated by a 5' "recovery" interval with 5 minutes for cool down for a total of one hour. Because the entire workout is only one hour long with plenty of time between sets, it's fairly easy to "knock off" one of these workouts.

Base 1


Whereas the previous Transition block focused on getting "back on the horse", so to speak, my Base 1 block was concerned with "hitting" key workouts (my previous blog discusses key workouts). The focus of this block was to establish a rhythm of 3 key workouts per week supplemented with some run and strength training.

Figure 3: the workouts comprising training Block 1.
Figure 3, above, shows the workouts done during this block. The plan was to use Tuesdays and Saturdays to gradually increase time spent at SS with Thursdays reserved for L5 work. I was able to execute fairly well on this part of the plan, bumping my SS sessions from 20 x 2 @ SS up to 30 x 2 @ SS by the end of the training block. I similarly happy with my L5 work, able to establish a weekly routine of 30/30 @ L5/L2 by the end of the training block.

Figure 4: standard 30' x 2 interval set.

Figure 4, above, illustrates the standard 30' x 2 interval set. The first 10 minutes are warm up. The two 30' "work" intervals, shown in black, are separated by a 2' "recovery" interval with 3 minutes for cool down for a total of 1 hour 15 minutes. The two dotted horizontal lines delineate my sweet spot range. Though this workout is a little tougher, mentally, than the 20' x 2 workout, by working up to it by first doing some 25' x 2 workouts, at only 1 hour 15 minutes, this workout is still quite doable.

Figure 5: standard 30/30 x 10 x 4 interval set.
Figure 5, above, illustrates the standard 30/30 x 10 x 4 interval set. The first 10 minutes are warm up. This is followed by 4 sets of 30/30. Each set is comprised of 10 reps of 30" at L5 followed by 30" at L2 with a 5' recovery interval following each set for a total of 1 hour 10 minutes. The upper and lower dotted line delineate the upper boundary of my L5 and L2 zones, respectively.

Though my rehab on the bike progressed quite nicely, my strength and run training did not fare as well. I lasted two strength training workouts before hurting my lower back making time on the bike extremely uncomfortable over the first half of the block. My run training didn't fair much better as sciatic pain in my left glute eventually put a stop to my run training. Both injuries were a direct result of my hip injury.

Performance Manager Chart (PMC)


Though I was able to get back on the bike fairly soon after surgery, because the volume of training was so much lower than what I had been doing up until the crash, I lost a lot of fitness.

Figure 6: loss training load incurred from date of surgery through the end of block 1.
The Performance Manager Chart (PMC) in Figure 3, above, shows the loss of training load from date of surgery through to the end of Block 1 (The PMC is discussed in a little more detail in my previous blog ). As you can see from the graph, training load decreased drastically during the Transition (Pretraining) period before leveling off somewhat in Block 1.

Interestingly, Figure 6 shows a spike in Weeks 2 and 3 where some favourable weather permitted several (3) decent outside rides. In my previous blog, I explain why Winter training is not particularly suited to increasing training load. The blip in Figure 3 illustrates this well. In the span of just 3 rides, my training load jumped 20% from 50 to 60 TSS/day. Whereas riding outdoors is conducive to accumulating large doses of training load, this is not practical on the trainer. For example, on Nov 5, I completed a 105 km group ride during which I expended a training stress score (TSS) of 255. This contrasts sharply with the trainer workout done the following week in which only 70 TSS was expended. Though it is possible to accumulate a lot of training load (TSS) on the trainer, it requires an extremely high level of motivation and commitment and, as such, isn't practical .

Outside vs Indoor training


Though outside riding is better for accumulating training load, indoor training provides more focus at the different training levels.

Outside Group Ride



Figure 7: time spent at each level for the outside group ride of Nov 5, 2014.
Figure 7, above, shows the amount of time spent at each level for the outside group ride of Nov 5 ride discussed above. The chart shows ride time distributed across levels. With more than 25% of the ride at Threshold (L4) or above, this was a fairly hard group ride. Yet, what's interesting is that, though this was a hard ride, the bucket with the largest amount of time (35%) was L1 indicating that over 1/3 of the ride was spent in Active Recovery. Morevover, the high variability Index (VI) for the ride (1.22) tells us that power output was all over the place. This is fairly typical of a group ride and demonstrates why it is hard to target specific training levels while riding with a group.

Figure 8: cadence distribution for outside group ride of Nov 5, 2014.

Figure 8, above, shows the cadence distribution for the same ride. What this figure shows is that over 30 minutes of the group ride was spent coasting (rpm between 0 and 10). Further evidence illustrating the difficulty of targeting specific training levels on a group ride.

Outside Solo Ride


Figure 9: Power distribution for an outdoor solo ride of Nov 1, 2014.
Figure 9, above, shows the power distribution of an outdoor solo ride done just a few days earlier than the Nov 5 group ride. Comparing this chart to the group ride of Figure 7, we can see that less time was spent in Active Recovery with more of a focus at L2/L3. The variability index (VI) for this ride was 1.13 which, compared to the VI of 1.22 in the group ride again illustrates this as a more focused ride.

Though time spent at L1 was lower for the solo ride than the group ride, it was still quite high at 25%. Contrast that to the trainer workout shown below.

Figure 10: time spent at each level for a trainer workout (Nov 12, 2014).
Figure 10, above, shows the power distribution for a trainer workout. The workout was comprised of 10' of warmup followed by two 25' SS intervals separated by a 2' recovery interval. Cool down was 3' for a total of one hour. What the figure shows is that nearly 85% of the time was spent in the target zones (L3 and L4) with only 2.5% spent at L1. Moreover, the variability index (VI) of 1.02 shows that the power was extremely constant for most of the workout. In other words, from a training perspective, this was a very focused workout, something unlikely to be achieved from a group ride or even a solo outdoor ride.

Summary


In this blog, I document my rehab from hip surgery. Overall, despite losing a lot of fitness (which was to be expected), my progress on the bike exceeded expectations leading me to be optimistic about the rest of the season. Progress off the bike was less promising but I can live with that, for now. I also further illustrated why outdoor training is better for accumulating training load whereas Winter training is more suited to training focused on the different levels.



1 comment:

Unknown said...

I enjoy your blog. Wish you a speedy recovery!